


Teenage Wasteland

by fluorescentgrey



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, mods and rockers au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:53:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24538018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluorescentgrey/pseuds/fluorescentgrey
Summary: When Remus came running up from the beach one of the mod boys was up on the boardwalk on his Lambretta. “Get on,” he said.“What?”“I said get on!”written in 2017
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 6
Kudos: 43





	Teenage Wasteland

When Remus came running up from the beach one of the mod boys was up on the boardwalk on his Lambretta. “Get on,” he said. 

“What?” 

“I said get on!” 

He had an army green mac with all these patches ironed on over a fitted brown suit and sleek loafers. His tie was pale-pastel perfect but there was a drop of blood on it. But most interestingly he had long hair. Remus hadn’t thought any mods had long hair, which was why, he supposed, he got on the Lambretta. That and he could hear the cops’ footfalls behind him on the stairs. The engine rumbled and under them the ground moved. He held on with one hand to the seat under him so as to avoid wrapping his arms around the driver. It was dusk and there was rain in the air not really falling but sitting. 

“You have priors, don’t you?” said the mod.

“What?” 

“Are you deaf? I said, you have priors, don’t you? That’s why you were running from the cops.” 

He stopped at a light and propped up the bike with his foot against the asphalt. There was a little mud spattered on the back of his suit pants. “Yeah, I do,” Remus said. 

“So do I. That’s why I left. It’s fucking bullshit. All those cops around.” 

They were around to keep you all from rioting, Remus did not say. The light changed and the mod picked up his foot and revved the little engine of the Lambretta and the bike jumped forward through the pools of streetlight. “Drugs, then,” Remus asked, over the street noise. 

“Yeah — purple hearts. Stealing them from a druggist’s to be precise. You?” 

“Drugs,” Remus lied. He thought wildly. “Um, marijuana.” 

“Really!” 

“Yeah.” 

“Well have you got some?” 

“Jesus — no. Being arrested, you know, kind of turned me off.” 

“I’ve never tried it actually,” said the mod thoughtfully. “It’s really just amphetamines.” 

“I’ve never had those.” 

“They make your brain work too fast really I think.” 

“Sounds like a nightmare.” 

“Yes. It kind of is. Is anyone behind us?” 

Remus looked. The streets were quiet. Down along the violet-thick shoreline police lights cut the blackening dusk. But there were no cops following. “We’re safe,” he told the driver. 

“Where’s your bike?” 

“I haven’t got one.” 

“I thought all rockers had bikes.” 

“That’s an egregious lie.” 

“Well how’d you get here?” 

“You can just take me to the train station.” 

They stopped at another light, and pulled uphill and inland toward the center of the city. A police car passed them sirens wailing heading down toward the beach. “There won’t be any trains til the morning,” said the mod. 

“I can sleep at the station.”

“How about a pub?” 

“I’m not going to any fucking mod pub — ”

“It’s not that. It’s just a regular old bloody pub. We’ll get out of the rain and have a nightcap after the evening we’ve had. And then I’ll take you round the train station. Alright?” 

The kid was clearly crazy. But also, he was buying, and he looked rich, inasmuch as most mods looked rich. So Remus said, “Alright.” 

\--

After three or four Holsten Pils the mod brought Remus back to his. It was a nice enough apartment in an estate on the edge of town and there were posters of the Who on the walls and it was past midnight. The mod went in the kitchen and put the radio on and found more beers in the fridge. The announcer on the BBC was saying there had been arrests in a mods versus rockers fight on the Brighton Pier signaling no doubt the moral decay of Britain’s youth. 

The mod sat down on the couch beside Remus and clucked his tongue. “Cheers mate,” he said. 

They had a couple more beers each whilst arguing about nothing then the mod put Miles Davis on the stereo and they danced. He had some of those purple hearts in an antique makeup case in his bedroom of which they each took one and then they kept dancing. It was so very late Remus didn’t know what time it was. There was a clock on the wall but he couldn’t be bothered to try and read it. The mod touched his hair and tried to rearrange it but it wouldn’t move for all the Brylcreem. So they went in the bathroom and rinsed it out in the shower laughing and laughing. 

“You should do it like this,” the mod said. Sitting on the damp tile floor. He was very gentle, and the cuffs of his shirtsleeves were wet, and his hair was starting to curl a little in the humidity. The cold water dripped over Remus’s neck and collar and soaked into his shirt. “You really do look quite lovely.” 

“You didn’t think so before?” 

“Fuck off.” 

Remus kissed him. They kissed there on the floor for a while and then they went to the mod’s bedroom which was decorated with even more posters of the Who and a Union Jack and one of those stupid blue and red and white targets. He looked around at it all with a kind of disgusted drunken intrigue and he understood what the mod had meant when he’d said the amphetamines just made your brain work faster for better or worse ie. for worse. Then the mod came up behind him and wrapped his arms around Remus’s belly and put his face in his neck and swayed a little to the tune of the Miles Davis record on the stereo. 

“The truth is actually I was arrested for this before,” said Remus. 

“What, for — ”

“Yeah for just kissing someone outside a club.” 

“Well there’s no cops here. They’re all on the beach.” 

“Yeah. I guess they all are on the beach.” 

They kissed and put the lights out and got in the bed. The comforter was worn so soft Remus understood the mod had probably had it since he was a child. The streetlight outside was flickering and wan through the rain and the lacy pawn-shop curtains. Their skin was like fabric and undifferent. He hadn’t really ever done it like this before with all the touching and the skin, kissing, Vaseline, hand at his throat, dawn in the window, so elastic at the end of it, shattered, shattering, holding this other body close, feeling, feeling —

\---

\--

-

**Author's Note:**

> now that i have your attention for posting some old r/s stories for the first time in two and a half years, i'm doing an [ongoing fundraising drive](https://yeats-infection.tumblr.com/post/619864266613407744/yeats-infection-yeats-infection) for organizations on the front line of the racial justice movement right now. if you'd like to take part, and i hope you will - yes, i WILL write r/s again if you ask nicely and give $$$ - please give and message me with proof (on tumblr or at fgreyfx @ gmail) and i will write you something. 
> 
> this was written for a tumblr anon who wanted to read r&s on opposing sides of a metaphysical debate, which, to me, they always are...


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